Remember Me
by liar
Summary: DMHG, SS, a tragic one-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Draco, Hermione or Snape. J

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AN: Thanks to Orchid for speed-beta-reading it! You really are a fantastic beta.

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This one-shot was actually written for a FanFic challenge on Fawke's Ashes, the following things had to be included:

- set on either the last day of year 6 or 7

- a current staff member retires

- a core character starts a new job

Please, read and review. Let me know, if you like it J

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I Am Sorry**

It was cold and windy. Not at all the weather one might suspect at this time of year, after all it was already June. However, the weather suited his mood, he wasn't one for sunshine and warmth anyway.

Today was his last day at school. Tomorrow, he would turn his back to the ancient walls of Hogwarts and he never intended to return.

Severus Snape was clutching his cloak firmly in his hand as he looked out from the tower over the grounds of what for the past few decades had been his home. All he needed to get through now was the ceremony. Just the formalities, he would hand out some of the awards for special service to the school to his Slytherin students, and then it would be over. Finally.

"Sir, Father sent me, he says they need you in the Great Hall to get everything ready for the ceremony."

"Thank you, Draco. I'll be there in a minute." His voice sounded hoarse and dry, lacking his usual sneer and pinch of superiority. He didn't look at the boy, well, young man at his side. Once, he had set so many high hopes in him, but that didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. They had lost.

"Sir…" Draco began, yet didn't finish his sentence. Instead, he took a step forward and placed his hands on the balustrade. He didn't wear a cloak and shivered involuntarily. The wind was biting at every inch of his exposed skin and tearing at his hair. They didn't look at each other. They couldn't. Too much had happened in the last months.

"Sir, she didn't have to suffer." And, after a pause, Draco added, "None of them did." He spoke softly, barely audible and the wind took up his words and carried them away, maybe, before the Professor could even hear them. "I never thought it would end like this. It just…happened."

"Nothing happens just like that, Draco." Snape answered slowly, still staring out across the grounds, his voice even and void of any emotion. "Tell me, do you still hear her screams and pleads for mercy at night, in your dreams?"

Draco didn't answer. His fingers only ever so faintly increased their grip of the stone. "Do you see her corpse lying in a pool of blood?"

"No." Draco merely breathed the word. He stared at the mountains, the forest, the lake, but didn't see them. There had been no blood. Only her body. A lifeless shell, nothing more but a carcass. Her carcass. He swallowed, but the lump in his throat wouldn't budge.

"No? What about the look in her eyes as she saw that it had been you who sold them? Can you ever forget that look?" the older man asked.

Her eyes. Her soft, brown eyes, that had lit up as her gaze fell on him when he stepped out from the shadows. Her eyes, that suddenly widened when realisation hit her. They say that the eyes are the windows to one's soul. Well, that second, Draco saw her soul shatter and break into a thousand pieces. Confusion. Betrayal. Hurt.

Understanding. He kept telling himself that there had been understanding in her eyes. That she knew and understood why he had done it. Why he had had to do it. He knew it was a lie. She hadn't understood it and she hadn't forgiven him.

Draco didn't notice the Professor leave and go back inside to the warmth of the castle.

In his head, he could see the last moments of her life being replayed over and over again. The relief showing on her face that he was there safe and sound. He didn't have as much as a scratch that blemished his pale skin. Her smile that froze as the Dark Lord seemed to appear out of thin air in front of her and her friends. Realisation dawning in her eyes. Her hair flying as she whipped around, wand at the ready to fight off the Death Eaters that were mercilessly closing in on them. Her screams as the first curses hit her. The fight only lasted a few minutes. She cried out his name. Begged for him to help them and then the crying died down and turned into sobs and whimpers. It was over quickly. She didn't have to suffer. A flash of green light and it was over. She didn't have to see Weasley and Potter die. They didn't torture her, didn't rape her or put her under the Cruciatus Curse. She didn't have to suffer.

It was a lie.

He had made her suffer and he knew it, saw it, felt it. He had submitted her to torture far worse than any of the Unforgivable Courses. She had trusted him and he had betrayed her, sold her life to safe his own. He had known that she would come to his rescue and that Potter and Weasley wouldn't let her go on her own, even if it was him she wanted to save from the Dark Lord.

Friendship.

Love.

It was their own stupid fault.

Blast it. Cleverest witch at Hogwarts in a century? Mudblood! If she really had been so damn clever then why didn't she notice that it had been nothing but pretence?

His stomach churned. He felt sick.

It had been pretence. He thought the words so loud that they rang in his head. He had never felt anything for her. Never. He had pretended that he liked the feel of her skin against his. He had only pretended that he yearned for her touch or her laughter. It hadn't been fun to talk to her. He hadn't enjoyed a split second of the time he had spent with her.

He could still remember the smell of her hair, her perfume. Sweet and innocent. Just like her. Naïve.

Her laughter that rang out clear and open.

Her lips as they touched his, soft and sweet.

His hands curled into fists, so tightly that his knuckles showed white through his skin.

He had no time for feelings.

No time for love!

No time for…guilt?

Tomorrow he was to start his job at the ministry. No one would associate him with the mysterious deaths of Hermione Granger, Potter or the Weasley. No one would dare to do so. To the public, he was nothing but a Hogwarts graduate who would begin his career as a Minister's assistant and soon, he would be Minister himself, one day even Minister of Magic, like his father was now. After all, he had graduated as top of the class.

Top of the class. He would never have made it if she had been alive. Wasn't it ironic that it had been her who had tutored him in Transfiguration so that in the end he would pass the exam magna cum laude?

They had sat together in McGonagall's classroom and she had taught him how to transfigure an owl into a teapot and a chair into an owl. It had taken him ages to figure it out. He just wasn't the Transfiguration type of wizard, he was more into potions and charms. But she had been patient, she had never laughed at him or become frustrated, but given him smiles and encouragement. She had always been there for him. Until the end. Her end.

He closed his eyes. He could see her smiling at him. Looking at him. Calling him.

Draco wanted to scream, scream until his throat was sore, but not a sound would come from his lips.

"Draco?" his father's voice cut through his thoughts like a knife. Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway of the tower where the wind and the cold couldn't reach him.

"Yes?" Draco answered, his calm voice betraying the turmoil inside him.

"It's about time you came down to the Great Hall. What took you so long up here?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry, Father," the young man replied and his voice died down, again, carried away by the wind.

"I'm sorry."


End file.
